A seven-year-old girl was found beheaded in the capital’s Pallabi area on Tuesday, with police suspecting that she was murdered after sexual assault.

According to the police, family members launched a search for the girl after she went missing in the morning.

At one stage, they searched the room of Sohel, 32, a tenant of the same building, and found the girl’s decapitated body.

The beheaded body was recovered from beneath the bed, while her severed head was later found inside a bucket kept in the bathroom of the flat.

Officer-in-charge of Pallabi police station Hasan Bashir said preliminary findings suggest the child was raped before being killed.

The accused reportedly fled through a window after the incident, he said, adding that they detained his wife Swapna for questioning.